Champions League D-Day for Tuchel's men

The Champions League group stage has rarely if ever enjoyed so many heavyweight matchups in one day. 

The volume of tasty fixtures on Tuesday offer the masses a glimpse of what life will be like once the footballing puppet masters put their dastardly European Super League plan in motion (more below), as high-flying Inter host LaLiga champions Barcelona, while recent runners-up Atletico Madrid look for vengeance over Bundesliga leaders Borussia Dortmund.

Elsewhere, Thierry Henry will be hoping to turn the tide on Monaco’s woeful 14-game winless run as the Ligue 1 side takes on Brugge at the Stade Louis II.

But all those games pale in comparison to the Group C mega clash between Napoli and Paris Saint-Germain.

A defeat at the San Paolo would put Thomas Tuchel’s men in serious danger of suffering the ultimate indignity of (*gasp*) playing Europa League football. And the players are well aware of what’s at stake. 

“We must approach it as if it were the last game of our lives,” said Neymar in no uncertain terms before the match.

Not to outdone on the heightening the drama stakes, former PSG coach and eyebrow contortionist Carlo Ancelotti has urged his players not to take the visitors lightly: “In order to get the better of these teams, we have to be perfect and produce a superlative performance.”

The Super League Jailbreakers 

We stand on the precipice of seismic and irreversible change, dear readers. And no, Sports Burst is not referring to the results to Tuesday’s midterms elections. 

We of course talk about the dawn of a European Super League!

Previously spoken about in lofty, pie-in-the-sky terms, this week the European Super League has taken on the air of an inevitable and long-in-the-making foregone conclusion - much like Juventus winning the Scudetto this season – following a wave of depressing (and depressingly predictable) revelations from the porous hands of Football Leaks. 

Among the catalogue of damning, erm, leaks is one scoop that even your sports-averse grandmother knew about: that eleven of the world’s biggest clubs are looking to imminently break away from their domestic leagues to form an elitist continental competition, where presumably the wearing of diamond encrusted cleats will be a mandatory requirement. 

Those eleven teams - for the benefit of your hermit uncle Albert - are Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Arsenal, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Juventus, Paris Saint-Germain and AC Milan, all of whom would juke it out along with five guest teams chosen on a seasonal basis. 

As a reward for being a founding member, all eleven clubs would be guaranteed their seat at the Super League trough for a whopping 20 years. To put that into perspective, that’s one Kylian Mbappe lifetime with enough time left over to binge about six weeks’ worth of TV series!

Mr. Wenger, we’ve been expecting you

While synapses in your brain instruct your facial muscles to convey varying degrees of outrage and hopeless despair upon reading that the world’s biggest clubs are plotting their escape from traditional league structures, those in the know are clamoring to hitch a ride on the soon-to-be-departing gravy train. 

And that leads us nicely to the story emerging about Arsene Wenger making his long awaited return to management. 

Last month, the 69-year-old teased he would be back in a dugout “at the beginning of 2019,” however, according to reports, we could see the 69-year-old fumbling with his coat zipper even before then.

France Football says the former Arsenal coach is being lined up to replace Gennaro Gattuso at AC Milan – the Rossoneri are currently fourth in Serie A and seemingly want to keep it that way.

Sports Burst for one is lending the story credence on the basis that Milan has long proven itself to be a model of patience and non-reactivity when results on the pitch don’t go the manager’s way.